Mygatt v. Schaffer

218 F. 827, 134 C.C.A. 515, 1914 U.S. App. LEXIS 1615
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedNovember 16, 1914
DocketNos. 27, 28
StatusPublished
Cited by24 cases

This text of 218 F. 827 (Mygatt v. Schaffer) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mygatt v. Schaffer, 218 F. 827, 134 C.C.A. 515, 1914 U.S. App. LEXIS 1615 (2d Cir. 1914).

Opinion

ROGERS, Circuit Judge

(after stating the facts as above). The Constitution gives Congress the power to promote the progress of science’and the useful arts by securing for limited times to’authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. In pursuance of that authority Congress in 1790 passed an act [829]*829providing for the issuance of letters patent, and since that time has passed various other acts which have made provision for securing to inventors a right of property in their inventions. And Congress in its legislation respecting patents has provided for the issuance both of mechanical and design patents, although in England designs are protected by copyright, and not by patent. The patents involved in the two suits now before us relate to a mechanical patent and to design patents.

The design patents were issued since 1902, 'and so are subject to the act of Congress passed May 9, 1902, amending section 4929 of the Revised Statutes so as to read:

. “Sec. 4929. Any person who has invented any new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture, not known or used by others in this country before his invention thereof, and not patented or described in any printed publication in this or any foreign country before his invention thereof, or more than two years prior to his application, and not in public use or on sale in this country for more than two years prior to his application, unless the same is proved to have been abandoned, may, upon payment of the fees required by law and other due proceedings had, the same as in cases of inventions or discoveries covered by section forty-eight hundred and eighty-six, obtain a patent therefor.” 32 Stat. pt. 1, p. 193.

The mechanical patent was issued since 1897, and so is subject to the act of March 3, 1897, amending section 4886 of the Revised Statutes (Comp. St. 1913, § 9430), so as to read:

“Sec. 4886. Any person who has invented or discovered any new and useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvements thereof, not known or used by others in this country, * * * and not patented or described in any printed publication in this or any foreign country, before his invention or discovery thereof, * * * and not in public use or on sale " * * for more than two years prior to his application, unless the same is proved to have been abandoned, may, upon payment of the fees required by law, and other due proceedings had, obtain a patent therefor.” 29 Stat. 692.

The first suit involves design patent No. 37,967 and will be first considered. In holding this patent invalid the court said:

“There is always, as the basis of the idea of design patent, the idea of ornamentation; the thing must have been made for the purpose of ornament, or at least a useful article must have been made in such a way as to make it ornamental.”

The court found nothing ornamental in the reflector in suit and thought:

“That the man who made them was not at work with any artistic idea of producing a thing of beauty; he was at work with a combination of prisms to produce an article of use. Incidentally the shade looks well lighted, like almost any other bulb.”

As the idea of ornamentation was not present to the eye of the District Judge the patent failed.

[1] We have given careful consideration to the opinion of the court below, but we find ourselves unable to concur with it in thinking that glass reflectors which are organized so as to discharge a useful mechanical function, and which present attractiveness of appearance and make a pleasing impression upon the eye, are not properly the sub[830]*830ject ofa design patent. It .is a mistake to assume that a patent for a design applies only to certain ornamentation upon an article of manufacture, and that it cannot properly apply to the article of manufacture itself as that article of manufacture is designed and produced.

In 1902 Congress amended the act, making it read that “any person who has invented any new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture” may obtain a patent for such design. Before that amendment the act permitted a design patent to issue for “any new, useful and original shape or configuration of any article of manufacture.” After this amendment was made the argument was advanced that Congress intended by the amendment that design patents for mere shape or configuration of an article of manufacture should no longer be granted. But in Theo. W. Foster & Bros. Co. v. Tilden Thurber Co., 200 Fed. 54, 118 C. C. A. 282 (1912) the Circuit Court of Appeals in the First Circuit held that it could not accept any such view of the matter. The court said:

“We are not prepared to accept this view. Though the amendment has dropped the word ‘useful’ and the express provision that a new shape or configuration given to an article of manufacture shall be patentable as a design, we are unable to believe it intended by these changes that no design for any article of manufacture shall be considered ‘new, original, and ornamental,’ within the meaning of the section as it now stands, if the ornamental character consists merely in a new and original shape or configuration given to the article. It is, of course, still true, as .was held before the amendment, that ‘design patents refer to appearance, not utility.’ ”

And it was held in that case that-a clothes brush is a proper subject for a design patent.

Prior to that decision, and after the amendment of the act made in 1902, we sustained in Ashley v. Samuel C. Tatum Co., 186 Fed. 339, 108 C. C. A. 539 (1911), a design patent for “the ornamental design for an inkstand as shown,” there being no written description of the invention, and in the opinion, written by Judge Facombe, the court said:,

“The manufacture of glass inkstands of this general character has been going on for very many years, and the chance of any broadly new design being produced would seem to be slight. Nevertheless the exhibits in the case indicate that complainant’s design shows a radical and distinctive change in type from those which preceded it; its dominant feature being the contour and relative proportions of parts, rather than the presence or absence of any applied ornamentation.”

In that case we sustained a design patent, notwithstanding the absence of any applied ornamentation.

It may be conceded that there is nothing novel in the shape of these reflectors or in the principle of their construction by the use of prisms. The fact that it was old to cut prisms in shades and reflectors.was not denied; neither was the claim made that novelty existed in the shape. But the fact that no such claims were made, or could be made, does not put these complainants out of court. In Washbourne & Dunn v. Webster, 195 Fed. 522, 115 C. C. A. 432 (1912), each element of the patented design considered separately was old, and sometimes two or more of them appeared combined in the prior art, and yet we held that these [831]*831facts did not invalidate the patents, unless it appeared that they were so assembled as to form the designs of the patents then in suit. And we then stated that it was the design as a whole which had to be considered; that the situation in this respect was analogous to machines made up of old elements.

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Bluebook (online)
218 F. 827, 134 C.C.A. 515, 1914 U.S. App. LEXIS 1615, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mygatt-v-schaffer-ca2-1914.